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For rapid information gathering in case of disaster, various unmanned search/rescue robots have been developed. It is difficult to respond to complex condition of a field where requires some locomotion strategies for most robots having only one kind of locomotion mechanism. To increase search routes in a such condition to aim gathering information more rapidly, we proposed the legged air vehicle:...
In this paper, a new control method for walking in-pipe robots is discussed. The method is based on a combination of a linear quadratic regulator for systems with explicit mechanical constraints and a proportional-derivative controller formulated in terms of end effector coordinates (Cartesian coordinates of the robot's foot that takes the step). The performance of the proposed method is measured...
Since the population of elderly gradually increases recently in developed country, and it causes an increase of burdens to care workers, there exists a strong demand for walking assist devices. The falling down of elderly may cause serious injuries which results in significant decrease of quality of life. Conventional wearable walking support devices are not easy for elderly to wear. The authors have...
Nowadays, decreasing birthrate and aging population become to be the serious social problem in Japan. Therefore, needs of assistive devices are more and more increasing. When people use such assistive devices, there is a risk that devices cost user excessive burden. So analysis and evaluation of motions and load of person who uses assistive devices are necessary. In this paper, a model to analyze...
We proposed a hybrid powered ankle exoskeleton. It can be able to supply positive mechanical power to the user during the swing phase of gait. The hybrid powered ankle exoskeleton was composed of a pair of compressed springs and a cable-driven actuator fasted to the shin. It was lightweight, and permitted the cable-driven actuator to provide the forces at the biological level to the ankle joint. Meanwhile...
The elderly sometimes fall owing to tripping caused by decreased dorsal flexion during the swing phase. A wearable assist device that was able to increase dorsal flexion to reduce the risk of tripping was proposed in this study. This device assists in dorsal flexion during the swing phase by transferring the tension force from the upper body to the foot by connecting them using strings. To improve...
Many wearable robots are not fully capable of fitting the motion of the wearer, owing to their limited degrees-of-freedom (DOF). This limitation disturbs motions such as corner curving, which are required in daily life. In this study, the effect of the DOF restriction on the corner curving motion was observed and analyzed. The gait motions, when curving a round corner with and without the restriction...
Due to the adverse temperature swings which normally occur in the power semiconductor devices during the start-up and deceleration periods of the motor drive system, the thermal design and control, as well as the reliability analysis of the power devices becomes crucial. In order to facilitate testing and access the loading and lifetime performances, a novel stress emulator for power semiconductor...
In this paper, we show a novel biped walking generation method based on eccentric rimless wheel to achieve efficient and stable dynamic biped walking. Eccentric rimless wheels have properties to naturally forward rotate their dynamics. Moreover, these walking speeds converge to constant velocity since the kinetic energy of the eccentric rimless wheel converges to constant value. We embed the property...
In this paper, we improve a running speed of a biped robot by using a control law of a new wobbling mass. In the model of the biped robot, the running speed decreases when using a conventional control law of the wobbling mass. We first describe the conventional running control law of the biped robot and propose a control law that moves the wobbling mass up and down so that the forward direction component...
Making conclusive performance comparisons of bipedal locomotion behaviors can be difficult when working with different robots. This is particularly true in the case of comparing energy economy, which is highly dependent on mechanical, electrical and control components. As a means of limiting these disparities in methodical testing, we built a modular bipedal robot platform, AMBER-3M. Three leg configurations...
Rehabilitation is very important for patients who suffer from stroke or spinal cord injury. To restore musculature, it is necessary to prepare for the next step of therapeutics. The passive exercise is one of the method to maintain the musculature and prevent complication as deep vein thrombosis (DVT) as the patient cannot move leg until patient has been recovered. After that active exercise can be...
In this paper, we propose the novel gait trajectory adaptation method applicable to an exoskeleton for strength augmentation. The proposed method consists of the online positive feedback trajectory adaptation method and the swing phase duration adaptation method. The swing test results of an exoskeleton prototype showed that the proposed method is more adaptable to the change of the trajectory amplitude...
This paper investigates a functional electrical stimulation (FES) cycling system on velocity tracking control for human limbs in order to stimulate multiple muscle groups continuously and simultaneously at all angles during pedaling. A stationary cycle and rider is modeled as an Euler Lagrange system by using a closed-chain mechanism. Stability of the developed controller is analyzed through Lyapunov-based...
Since manual rehabilitation therapy can be taxing for both the patient and the physiotherapist, a gait rehabilitation robot has been built to reduce the physical strain and increase the efficacy of the rehabilitation therapy. The prototype of the gait rehabilitation robot is designed to provide assistance while walking for patients with abnormal gait pattern and it can also be used for rehabilitation...
We have developed a hip joint exoskeleton to boost gait function in the elderly and rehabilitation of post-stroke patients. To quantitatively evaluate the impact of the power and mass of the exoskeleton, we measured the metabolic cost of walking on slopes of 0, 5, and 10% grade, once not wearing the exoskeleton and then wearing it. The exoskeleton reduced the metabolic cost by 13.5,15.5 and 9.8% (31...
This paper aimed to verify the effectiveness of the wearable robotic system “curara” for patients with spinocerebellar degeneration (SCD) by evaluating walking smoothness. The curara system supports the wearer's gait using a synchronization control method that uses a neural oscillator based on a central pattern generator network. The system reflects the motional intention by adjusting the synchronization...
There are many important factors in developing an exoskeleton for assisting human locomotion. For example, the weight should be sufficiently light, the assist torque should be high enough to assist joint motion, and the assistance timing should be just right. Understanding how these design parameters affect overall performance of a complex human-machine system is critical for the development of these...
Lower limb exoskeletons are being used to assist people with movement disorders during activities of daily living or rehabilitation. However, providing a natural interface that automatically adapts to the patient's movement limitations remains an open challenge. In this paper, we present a control implementation that combines a compliant actuator technology with the concept of tacit learning to improve...
The most important step for lower extremity exoskeleton is to infer human motion intent (HMI), which contributes to achieve human exoskeleton collaboration. Since the user is in the control loop, the relationship between human robot interaction (HRI) information and HMI is nonlinear and complicated, which is difficult to be modeled by using mathematical approaches. The nonlinear approximation can...
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